TEA to visit MISD bilingual programs

Ruth CampbellMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 7:00 pm, Monday, March 23, 2009

Texas Education Agency officials will visit nine elementary schools and all secondary campuses within Midland Independent School District the week of April 20 to see what's being done to improve the bilingual/English as a second language program.

The district-wide Educational Improvement Council discussed the state of the bilingual program during a meeting Monday night at the administration building. The meeting was attended by board members Rick Davis, Tommy Bishop, Karen Fullen and Karen Nicholson.

The state visit means the district's limited English proficient (LEP) students have not performed to state standards on the TAKS test and data from the Performance-based Monitoring Analysis System (PBMAS), which TEA looks at to see how students in all subgroups are doing, Director of Bilingual/ESL Lorrie Orosco said.

The agency will examine how the district is doing with all subgroups of students, Orosco said.

"Right now they're coming in to help us," Orosco said, adding she did not foresee any sanctions. "I'm hopeful they're going to see everything we're doing."

There are 1,890 students in bilingual/ESL programs in MISD. There are 400 at the secondary level and the remainder in elementary, Orosco said. Bilingual students receive instruction in their native language and English while ESL students are taught solely in English with an emphasis on vocabulary.

MISD Superintendent Sylvester Perez said there is a need to create more consistency in the bilingual program among all campuses. He said it can be done to improve academic achievement and instructional quality.

"We have to move toward a more systemic, structured program for bilingual education. … We have to address the quality of instruction, along with the kinds of instruction we can deliver to our students, such as instructional technologies that we can infuse into the curriculum that will help these students be successful," Perez said.

Officials said much of the problem is students who aren't successful enough to exit the bilingual program. Orosco said students exit the bilingual program based on how proficient they are in English. The goal is to have them out of the program by third grade, although that varies according to when they may have entered the program, or if they went back to Mexico and then came back to Midland, for example.

"In most cases, they were in and out of the program," Orosco said, adding that when students return, teachers have to do double the work to catch the student up on vocabulary and academic language.

Teachers have been receiving training on strategies to reach these students and get to know them. Those students who don't know a lot of English aren't going to speak up if they don't understand something, she said.

"I think it's all in the training we're providing to (teachers) now that they haven't had before. We're training teachers culturally and academically on how to help these students," Orosco said.